Eurasia Consort’s new album, Music of Paradise, explores folk songs and dances from Tang Dynasty courts. It feels like an unbroken link to a past too often overlooked in the West. For this journey, the musicians immersed themselves in Chinese artwork and old manuscripts from the 7th through the 9th centuries.

Volume 2 of Cut Circle’s complete Josquin cycle, gloriously sung, includes motets from the 1480s and the ‘smutty’ Missa L’ami baudichon. Director Jesse Rodin’s startling approach to Josquin moves away from that smooth Anglican-style choral sound. The five-voice ensemble makes a satisfying new argument for how this polyphony might have sounded.

From the Publications Director: On the research side, A.I.’s skill in gathering and summarizing information opens boundless possibilities. But the interpretation of facts is an art all its own, not to be casually handed over to a bot. It’s crazy to have to say this, but here we are: Writing is as much an art as playing the viola da gamba or the crumhorn.

This reassessment of musical culture — particularly religious music — in 15th-c. Bohemia tries to look beyond the nationalist agendas that have previously colored scholarly work on this topic. As a rare holdout for monophonic chant and an area undergoing theological reform in the late Middle Ages, the region provides rich topics for this collection of essays written through an updated lens.